Page 10 of Here in Your Arms
“But, Rose,” Emmy said, slowing the horse, angling it sideways, “you’re here, aren’t you?”
Rose barely heard Emmy’s words, her mind too tangled in the utter impossibility of it all. But then, as the horse slowed beneath them, Emmy’s arm stretched outward, gesturing toward something ahead.
Rose followed the motion, and her breath caught.
Looming in the distance, its stone walls dark against the dark gray sky, was acastle. Not a crumbling relic, not the picturesque ruins she had visited on tours—this was afortress, solid and imposing, rising from the mist like something conjured from a history book. High walls of rough-hewn stone surrounded it, with narrow slits for archers cut into the surface. Towering battlements crowned the structure, their jagged tops like the teeth of some great beast. A massive gate stood at its center, flanked by wooden watchtowers. Beyond it, she could just make out the peaked rooftops of inner buildings and the faint wisp of smoke curling from chimney stacks.
It looked like something straight out ofMonty Python and the Holy Grail, which she had seen with her aunt a few years back, only no one was clapping coconut halves together to make the sound of a horse galloping, and she was most certainly not laughing.
This wasreal.
Certainly, it seemed that way. She stared, her pulse speeding up again.
No spotlights illuminated the walls. No neatly printed plaques stood at the entrance, offering tourists a brief history before leading them to a well-manicured path with a gift shop at the end. No, this place wasn’t stuck in the past, preserved as some grand museum piece. It belonged here. Itwasthe present.
“This is Dunmara,” Emmy said softly. “Home.”
Rose tried to make sense of it, tried again to make it actually be a movie set... or a medieval reenactment village? No—sheknewhistorical sites, and this waswrong. It wasn’t carefully restored—it waslived in. The muddy road leading up to it had been worn smooth by the passage of countless hooves, not the treads of modern hiking boots, not a single tire track. A small herd of sheep grazed nearby, not fenced in by wooden posts, but loosely watched by a boy in a thick woolen cloak. A man hauling a cart of firewood lumbered toward the gates, his plaid fastened with a metal brooch too dull to catch the late afternoon light.
Rose’s mouth went dry. Her fingers clenched again in the wool of Emmy’s cloak. She tried to saysomething, anything that made sense, but the words wouldn’t come.
Emmy prodded the horse forward again, catching up with the party they’d been riding with all day.
“We’ll just take it one day at a time,” Emmy said gently. “I don’t know another way to make it easier for you.”
They passed through the gates and the horses’ hooves clattered against the cobblestones of the inner courtyard.
A chill passed through Rose, less from the cool night air than from the weight of Emmy’s words still settling in her mind.
This is Scotland. The year is 1304.
The truth should have been impossible. Yet, the past didn’t seem to be only on paper anymore, something to be studied via artifacts. It was all around her.
Ahead, the group had dismounted, soldiers moving efficiently to tend the horses. Brody, already on the ground,turned and approached as Emmy reined in. His sharp eyes flicked from his wife to Rose, with scowling assessment. He reached up to help Emmy down first, his touch brief but unmistakably familiar, his gaze softening for only an instant before shifting back to Rose.
When he extended his hand to her, it wasn’t exactly hesitant—Brody MacIntyre didn’t seem like the kind of man who hesitated about anything—but there was something in his expression that suggested caution, a question unspoken. Either he was trying to make sense of her, or he was asking permission to assist her.
Rose hesitated, not because she feared him, but because she wasn’t sure she could get down without making a fool of herself. As if sensing her reluctance, Brody didn’t wait for her to decide. His large hands closed firmly around her waist, lifting her from the saddle with effortless strength.
Rose barely had time to stiffen before her feet hit the ground. She swayed, unsteady, but Brody stepped back immediately, watching her with the kind of wariness one might direct at a puzzle missing half its pieces. He said nothing, merely gave a curt nod before turning toward the keep.
Emmy’s reassuring hand touched Rose’s arm. “Would you like to rest for a while? I know it’s a lot to take in. Or are you hungry?”
Hungry?
Rose blinked. Food hadn’t even occurred to her.
She hesitated for only a moment before her stomach answered for her, a dull pang of hunger tightening in her belly. She exhaled, realizing she hadn’t eaten since—God, when?
“Food,” she murmured, as though testing the word. She swallowed, then nodded. “Yeah. I think I need to eat something.” It was one thing to pass out from trauma, as she wasexperiencing now, but she shouldn’t aid and abet it, weakening herself by going hungry.
Emmy smiled, urging her forward with her arm looped through Rose’s. “Come inside, then. We’ll find you something to eat.”
Rose walked beside Emmy, beneath the stone archway and through the heavy wooden doors. Rose’s eyes widened the moment they stepped inside, directly into the great hall of a medieval castle. Whether it truly was 1304 or this was simply a careful restoration, she still wasn’t sure. But the hall was magnificent, though not in the pristine, museum-like way she was used to seeing medieval artifacts. But because it felt so real, so true. Wooden beams covered the ceiling high overhead, blackened with age and soot from countless fires. Rushes covered the floor, woven with the scent of herbs meant to keep pests and odors at bay. The room was vast and dimly lit by a low fire in a massive hearth, and a dozen trestle tables sat in neat rows before a high table which sat at one end on a raised dais. The space felt cavernous, strangely still with all those vacant tables, even as it seemed so... genuine.
Rose barely had time to take it all in before Emmy steered her toward a smaller doorway off to the side. “Supper is done for the day, so we’ll have to go straight to the kitchen,” she said. “Maud and Agnes will take care of you.”
Rose nodded agreeably but absently.
